PSYCHICAL EVOLUTION 137 



groom with his aids to the marriage is a figura- 

 tive marauding expedition. The honeymoon is 

 the abduction. And the charivari and raissile- 

 throwmg indulged in by friends and relatives on 

 the departure of the wedded twain is a good- 

 humoured counterfeit of the armed protest made 

 by relatives of old when a bride-snatcher came 

 among them (4). 



The vestiges found everywhere in the mental 

 and social phenomena of man and other animals 

 have arisen as necessary facts in the process of 

 mental evolution. They arc the vermiform appen- 

 dices of the mind. 



8. One of the strongest reasons for a belief in 

 the physical evolution of animal species is that 

 furnished by individual evolution. Each individual 

 animal recapitulates in a wonderful manner the 

 phylogenesis of its species. Now, it is extremely 

 significant that a similar parallel exists in the 

 case of mental evolution. Each individual mind 

 ascends through a series of mental faculties which 

 epitomises in a remarkable manner the psycho- 

 genesis of the animal kingdom. 



The human child is not born with a full-grown 

 mmd any more than with a full-grown body. It 

 grows. It exfoliates. It ripens with the years. 

 It begins in infancy at the 2ero-point, and in 

 manhood or womanhood may blaze with genius 

 and philanthropy. 



But the mind of the child not only unfolds : it 

 unfolds in a certain order, the more complex 

 parts and the more civilised emotions invariably 



